Kathrin Schärer

Johanna im Zug

«Ich zeichne einen langen Zug, einen Zug mit vielen Wagen. Ist das schon eine Geschichte?»

We are sitting alongside the artist at her worktable. In front of us lie coloured pencils, brushes, scissors, Max Frisch’s «Biography: A Game» and a nearly empty sheet of paper. A railway locomotive and two wagons have been outlined. «I’m drawing a long train, a train with lots of wagons. Does that make a story yet?», she asks. Yes, a beginning, certainly. Then the train’s passengers are introduced – a goat, a dog, a cow and a small pig: Johanna.

Johanna intervenes in the story, prevents the small polar bear (is it Hans de Beer’s Lars ?) from getting into the wrong train. She asks for company and makes the acquaintance of a wolf, a fierce monster. Eventually she begins to banter with Jonathan, a pig from another train. Which should do, right? The two pigs pull the piece of paper from the artist’s hand and release her to work on the next story...
This picture-book by Kathrin Schärer is not only a warm-hearted story about a confident lady pig but also a book about the creation of a picture-book and the interaction of the artist with her characters. Schärer finds formally impressive solutions for the experimental character of the story. On one double page she might narrate with hardly any words at all, while driving the plot forward on the next few half-pages – which seem like books within books – and later reaching for the stylistic devices of comics. A book for persons of nearly every age, which animates one to philosophise on what a story is in the first place.

(Awarded the Swiss Media Prize for Young Audiences 2011)

(Christine Tresch, trans. by Simon Froehling)
Source: SIKJM Database

Translation of title: Johanna by Train

Atlantis, Zürich 2009

ISBN: 978-3-7152-0582-3